Trajectory tracking control of a group of cooperative planar space robot systems

A free-floating space robot is a non-holonomic system due to the conservation of the angular momentum. To control this type of system, it becomes impossible to have a desired trajectory without taking into account the non-holonomy effect of the system. This is further important for close trajectory tracking during the interaction with free-floating object. This article presents trajectory control of the three planar space robots having 2 degrees of freedom each to handle a free-floating object cooperatively. In this article, the work proposes the use of a control strategy (amnesia removal control) to take care of non-holonomy in the system. To demonstrate the efficacy of the proposed scheme, a comparative study of the proportional-integral-derivative-controlled three planar space robot systems with and without using amnesia recovery has been successfully carried out. Bond graph modeling has been used to model the system dynamics and to implement the control strategy.